My family didn't like me going on the stage, and they didn't much like my being a writer, either.

I was brought up Irish, where there was room for my own private world.

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

I think the idea of 'Mary Poppins' has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life.

I started my career buying and owning single-family houses, and I know that's a really tough job. Toilets break. Trees fall. There are so many things that can go wrong. Land, on the other hand, is cheap to manage. It's painless, really. All you have to do is pay your taxes, and that's it.

I always wonder what my life would be like if I had parents like the other kids who went to my high school.

I take my children everywhere, but they always find their way back home.

It's not a public matter when you discipline your family.